India is seeing a significant drop in food inflation, reaching a 30-month low of -2.28% in September 2025. Experts predict this trend will continue, mainly due to lower prices of key food items and a high base effect from last year. While consumers are benefiting from cheaper food, farmers are struggling. Prices for many crops are falling below the government’s Minimum Support Price (MSP). This is making farming less profitable and discouraging farmers from growing these crops.
Globally, food commodity prices have fallen sharply. The World Bank reported an 11.5% decrease in major food grain prices in 2025. Rice prices have seen the biggest drop, falling by about 30%. Wheat prices are down around 7%, and maize prices by about 3%. Soybean prices have also continued to fall, dropping 1.3% in 2025.
In India, prices for rice, tur, mung, urad, groundnut, and soybean have also decreased. Wholesale rice prices showed negative inflation of -0.8% in August and -1.5% in September 2025. For several months, market prices for rice were even below the MSP, though they later recovered, possibly due to government procurement.
Pulses and oilseeds have experienced significant price drops. The cost of pulses started falling steeply from December 2024. This is largely due to a sharp increase in imports, which reached a record 7.3 million tonnes in 2024-25. Unlike rice and wheat, there hasn’t been much government buying of pulses at MSP, except for chana in recent years. As a result, prices for pulses have remained well below MSP, even when they are not in season.
The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) in September showed a steep fall of over 35% for tur, followed by urad, gram, and mung, which dropped by 14%, 13.5%, and about 3% respectively. For oilseeds like groundnut and soybean, WPI prices have been declining for over a year. This is due to record production in 2024-25, with groundnut output reaching about 11.8 million tonnes and soybean at 15 million tonnes. Lower global soybean prices have also affected domestic prices. Similar to pulses, government procurement for groundnut and soybean has been inconsistent or very low, keeping prices below MSP throughout 2025.
However, prices for rapeseed and mustard have increased. This is because their output in 2024-25 was lower, according to the latest estimates. Despite government efforts to become self-sufficient in pulses and oilseeds, the area planted with oilseeds during the Kharif season (ending October 3, 2025) fell by about 5.3%. The area for pulses only saw a small increase of about 1.1%.
The area for soybean planting decreased by around 7%, and for groundnut by about 3.2%. For pulses, the area for tur and mung remained the same as the previous year. Urad planting increased slightly by about 1.5 lakh hectares. In contrast, rice cultivation continued to grow, with an increase of 5.9 lakh hectares, reaching a record 441.5 lakh hectares in Kharif 2025-26.
These trends clearly show that when prices fall below MSP and are not supported by government procurement, farmers tend to avoid growing those crops. To achieve self-sufficiency in edible oils and pulses, it is crucial to ensure farmers receive fair prices for their produce. In the short term, MSP procurement is vital to encourage farmers to expand the cultivation of pulses and oilseeds. In the long term, establishing efficient market channels that connect farmers directly to buyers is essential. This would help reduce the number of middlemen, increase farm incomes, and improve crop yields and output through new technologies and farming methods.